Posts by David 132

FTX cryptovillain Sam Bankman-Fried charged with bribing Chinese officials

“Provide liquidity” is a fancy euphemism for “Pissing it all away”.

Gone in 120 seconds: Tesla Model 3 child's play for hackers

Re: Expect updates soon

What you missed is that the second prize was two Teslas.

(Paraphrasing a very old joke. I think the first time I heard it, the context was a fictional TV game show and the punchline was "...second prize, TWO weeks in Bognor!")

The most bizarre online replacement items in your delivered shopping?

Re: Sellotape instead of loo paper

Good for the old Chalfonts!

Wasn’t that a recurring Viz strip at one time?

Microsoft freaks out users with Windows 11 warning: 'LSA protection is off'

Re: maybe it'll do the job bette

Careful. The obligatory XKCD suggests otherwise!

How Arm aims to squeeze device makers for cash rather than pocket pennies for cores

You’ve given me an idea.

“ARM, we want to use your chips in our small, useless proprietary breakout PCB that will have a retail price of about $5. So you’ll only be charging us pennies for the chip design, right?

Coincidentally, our company also sells an extremely high-end smartphone chassis that just so happens to accept that small PCB as a plug-in core module…”

Microsoft scrambles to fix Windows 11 'aCropalypse' privacy-battering bug

Re: I wonder

Oh, surely they can't all be copying-and-pasting the same "solution" from Stack Overflow?

Microsoft to give more than microsecond's thought about your Windows 11 needs

I want to escape this thread.

Cisco kindly reveals proof of concept attacks for flaws in rival Netgear's kit

This article’s headline

…reminded me of that old Onion article: “Ford issues recall for Chrysler minivans” (or words to that effect… it’s been 20 years or more and my google-fu isn’t up to finding the link)

Microsoft admits Azure Resource Manager failed after code change

Re: ARM, as Azure customers will know, is a deployment and management service...

>One of our engineers tried to download the P*rnhub back catalog using a Powershell script.

Well, that would certainly explain the cock up.

Earth is running out of places for stargazers to do dark deeds in the name of science

A few years ago I was in Hawaii, on Big Island (so, technically, on Hawaii too). My wife and I drove up Mauna Kea one night. There's the James Clark Maxwell telescope at the summit of course, but also a visitor centre part way up, and on that night the local astronomy society had set up their telescopes in the car park there for public use.

I've never before, or since, seen such a spectacular view of the night sky. It was incredible; no exaggeration, it was like looking at a live version of the ST:TNG opening credits; I half expected the Enterprise to swoop into view at some point.

(And yes, I know, saying "the night sky looked as good as the credits from a fictional TV show" does sound rather sad, come to think of it...)

Anyway it really brought home to us just how degraded the night sky is in most of the Western world, and what we've lost almost without noticing.

Lenovo Thinkpad X13s: The stealth Arm-powered laptop

Re: D'oh. Botched my own edit.

> Reg authors are also restricted by the annoying 10-minute edit window!

But on the plus side, as an official Reg staffer, you’re allowed to drive in bus lanes, take a shopping trolley through “baskets only” checkouts, you’re accredited to perform weddings and register deaths, and as a team you are collectively third in line to the throne.

Plus, of course, all that attention from screaming Reg groupies, although I dare say that gets a bit tedious.

Re: Need a USB Hub for that

> Thank you for that! I do try. :-)

As my mother used to retort ambiguously... "Yes. You certainly are trying."

You're right, and in the early 80s editions there's some really good in-depth discussions of how to write compilers, or plot lines on screen efficiently, or about object-oriented vs. functional programming. As the decade turns towards the 90s it's noticeable that the tone becomes more "look at this new ready-built PC from vendor X".

What struck me, more than anything I think, is how vibrant the ecosystem was at the time. Thousands of small companies touting their hardware/software/services, with varying degrees of hyperbole. "AI" cards for the PC/AT. Serial port printer sharers. 2MB!!! add-in memory boards. 19" monitors that can do a stunning 1280x1024 - in monochrome ;)

Maybe there's just as many small vendors now, but seeing them all shouting for attention in the small/classified ads really made me think that we've lost something, now that the personal computer is so much more standardized.

And less of the "kids today" please, sarcastic one above. I lived through that era the first time round and have the ZX81 RAMpack-blutack PTSD to prove it :)

I didn’t even notice. Thanks to a commenter on the Xerox Star article a few days ago, I’ve been deep in the rabbit-hole of reading old BYTE magazines from the 80s. All computers now in my conception have a million discrete components, RAM measured in the megabytes, and multiple 5-1/4” disc drives. Anything beyond that is witchcraft. Witchcraft, I tell you.

I’m glad that PC/laptop screens have finally moved away from the annoyance of a few years ago where they were all 720p or 1080p (because those panels were manufactured by the bajillion for TVs, and hence cheaper).

It’s so nice to once again be able to buy computer screens with decent vertical resolution!

Curl, the URL fetcher that can, marks 25 years of transfers

Re: curl <3

bash: 3: No such file or directory

Potatoes in space: Boffins cook up cosmic concrete for off-world habitats

Re: Giant Igloos???

> which has made the shortlist for my hypothetical band name

As with so many of these things, it would also work as the title of a sex tape.

Re: Potato starch?

Didn’t Ben Elton do a sketch in the 80s about the incredible adhesive tenacity of dried cornflakes congealed on a plate?

Or was it Alexei Sayle? All that wacky edgy 80s comedy blurs together after all these years, alas.

ReMarkable emits Type Folio keyboard cover for e-paper tablet

Re: And?

I could only read that like it was a line from Airplane… “We have to get him to a hospital” / “A hospital? What is it?” / “It’s a big building with patients but that’s not important right now”

Feds arrest and charge exiled Chinese billionaire over massive crypto fraud

Re: Wasn't hhe a champion of freedom and democracy recently?

Oh look! It's another of Pooh's useful idiots.

Go away.

Re: Too easily fooled to be thought an honest broker of correct information or dodgy intelligence?

Never mind chatgpt, a drunken monkey flailing at a keyboard with a live haddock in each hand is better than that textual effluvium.

The Stonehenge of PC design, Xerox Alto, appeared 50 years ago this month

Re: Smalltalk

Aaaaargh. Thanks to your comment, I've been sucked down a fresh rabbit-hole and have spent the last hour reading that edition of Byte. Thanks, I think?

(https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08/mode/2up?view=theater, for those similarly tempted)

Microsoft dips Teams in the metaverse vat with avatars ahead

Re: I want to make a teleprompter type set up ...

> redraws your eyes looking directly at the camera - and yes it is creepy as fsck

That does sound incredibly creepy. Why do I have a mental image of Roger Rabbit's Judge Doom?

Re: Meanwhile....

Oh, come on. It's not as if these "AI" systems would do anything devious.

Re: If I designed products this way, we'd go bust

You had me fooled and even nodding along with you until you said that Outlook "works flawlessly".

Nice try, ChatGPT.

Bing AI feels like ChatGPT stuffed into a suit – not the future

"whose barbara [wood emoji][house emoji]"

Of course, at the time, I was very, very drunk.

Re: NüBing

So do we refer to the non-GPT variant as the UrBing?

>"No, it is a gazebo"

But does it like Chopin?

China sought control of submarine cables to spy, says Micronesia

Re: China is simply following the lead of the west

Yep. They're hilarious to watch. I feel almost sorry for them.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 as a Linux laptop

Re: updating...

Oh absolutely, and don't get me wrong, Windows 2000 is the One True OS, the prelapsarian Eden that daily, we fall further and further from. If I had my way I'd still be running it. Just hearing its startup sound always gives me a madeleine moment, recalling a time when IT was waaaaay more fun. (At the opposite extreme: Windows 10's "Use Advertising ID yes/no: if you turn this off you'll still see the same number of adverts but they won't be as relevant". There are so many things wrong with that, and what it says about the state of modern end-user IT, but that's a rant for another time.)

I singled out NT4 though simply because its installer is freakishly fast on modern HW. Win2K's installer is still speedy but not to the same ridiculous degree.

Let's have a pint and reminisce.

Re: updating...

I use Windows NT4 on my machines. A full installation from scratch takes about 2 minutes.

(Seriously. Have you ever tried installing it in a VM on modern hardware? The installer absolutely flies.)

Re: T14s

I have a T14 here (machine type 21AH) and can confirm that it has a full-size Ethernet port. Left hand side, next to the USB-C/TBT ports.

Re: single-tap, double-tap

Seconded, and I speak as one who generally prefers PCs for their greater flexibility.

I have never found a PC touchpad that is as reliable and efficient to use as Apple's implementation. They're always either too sensitive, or not sensitive enough, or randomly misinterpret clicks/swipes. Whereas the one on the Macbooks I've owned and used always just... works.

Re: installed on every machine

Interesting. Your comment made me think "Surely it supports legacy boot?".

But you're right. I have a T14 here (basically the same as the X1, but has an Ethernet port :) ) with a 12th Gen Core processor and yep, or rather nope - no legacy boot option in the BIOS, only UEFI.

As an aside though, I'm delighted to see that the BIOS setup UI on this one can be switched between fancy-schmancy graphical and good old quick-and-reliable text-mode. Never seen that on a BIOS before; it's normally one or the other.

Re: T14s

It's worth pointing out that Lenovo's Thunderbolt 4 dock works really, really well, and provides full Ethernet support, including Intel AMT out-of-band hardware management. AFAIK there are no other TBT4 docks that implement AMT.

No, a TBT4 dock isn't a solution when you're out and about - it's about the size of a paperback book - but for working at a desk it's great; charging, display, Ethernet and any attached drives/printers etc all via one cable.

Yes, I am somewhat of a Thunderbolt fan.

Windows 11 puts 'disgusting' Remote Mailslots protocol out of its misery

Re: That brings back some memories

Oddly specific, there. Do I sense a future "Who, Me?" anecdote? :)

The trouble is…

…that when I hear Microsoft describe a protocol as “disgusting” and overdue for replacement, my immediate reaction is “it’s from the bad old days when IT was ruled by techies not clever people with MBAs; in other words, we can’t monetize it, or use it to get adverts to the end-user”.

I am getting too cynical.

Humanoid robot takes a retail job, but not one any store clerk wants to do

Re: Robotizing Tasks Humans Dislike

"Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to fold socks.

Call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't."

Windows Insider Dev Channel flies again as very flighty Canary Channel

Re: shameless

Why do I suddenly have the Portal theme-song running through my head?

“We do what we must, because we can.

For the good of all of us,

Except the ones who are dead…”

Tech demo takes brain scan, creates a picture of what you're looking at

Re: nuclear magnetic resonance imaging

> whilst being wheeled about a hospital with a broken leg, we passed a sign for the "Department of Nuclear Medicine". Although "Nuclear Medicine" might have sounded pretty awesome, on the whole I was probably better off in Orthopaedics.

Where’s your sense of adventure? You could have left there with SIX broken legs!

Can we interest you in a $10 pocket calculator powered by Android 9?

Re: "Asok has a basket containing 12 apples, Nish wants 7..."

He’s obviously a waffle man.

Re: Ok... I have to ask

I think you’ve got to the root of it there. There are many factors differentiating this product that integrates so many components…

Re: Ok... I have to ask

I know. Wifi, touchscreen, gigabytes of storage… it just doesn’t add up.

Why ChatGPT should be considered a malevolent AI – and be destroyed

Re: Replicorrections

Replying to myself, because I missed the edit window... Here it is on youtube.

Re: Replicorrections

I have a lovely recording in my collection - and it's probably on youtube, although I CBA to check - of an IBM mainframe at Bell Labs in the very early 60s, running a demo. It starts by playing a rather wonky, but recognizable, monophonic rendition of Daisy, Daisy. Rough, but darned impressive for the era, you think. Then it begins the second repetition, this time with harmonies and percussion. Wow, you think, this is actually amazing for 1961-whatever.

And then the mind-blowing moment when, on the third iteration, the synthesized speech comes in singing the actual words. WTF.

They were clever boffins indeed. And my understanding is that this demo was the inspiration for HAL9000's performance a few years later.

This pint's for them.

Re: Brazil

Give it a job in the Civil Service, immediately. Should fit right in.

Thought you'd opted out of online tracking? Think again

Pihole in particular is invaluable - instant ad blocking for just about every device on the network.

Although remember to turn off Firefox's $%@#! DNS-over-HTTPS which if you're not paying attention will helpfully bypass your Pi-hole.

Windows 11 update breaks PCs that dare sport a custom UI

Re: If at first you fail to innovate...

"Windows Ain't Done Till Vivetool Won't Run"